Introduction
MetaHumans are highly customizable characters that can be exported to Unreal Engine. They are composed of multiple skeletal meshes, including the body, face, and clothing.
The body mesh can be customized by selecting a body type (male, female, underweight, normal weight, overweight) and height. The face mesh can be customized with different facial features. Clothing can be added and removed to change the character’s appearance.
Issue:
The problem is that the body mesh is divided into multiple parts based on the clothing that is being worn. For example, if the MetaHuman is wearing long sleeves, long pants, and shoes, the body mesh only consists of the hands and ankles. If the MetaHuman is wearing short sleeves, a shirt that ends at the waist, short pants, and sandals, the body mesh includes the entire feet, legs up to the pants, a strip of skin for the waist, and arms and hands.
This makes it difficult to change the character’s clothing in real time. For example, if you want to change a t-shirt to a sweatshirt, you need to change the entire body mesh.
Possible Solutions:
I thought about some possible solutions for this problem:
- Create a separate body mesh for each clothing combination. But where can i find all the body meshes for every combination? I’d have to download a lot of metahumans (50+ I think)
- Create separate meshes for the body parts that change based on clothing. (I’m not sure about how to do this because I’d have to download a lot of Metahumans and I don’t know how to cut skeletan meshes because Unreal doesn’t have a tool for that)
- Find a way to hide the unwanted parts of the body mesh. This would be the least time-consuming and resource-intensive solution.
I am looking for advice on how to solve this problem. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Additional Information:
- I am using Unreal Engine 5.3
- I am using the MetaHuman Creator 5.3
Screenshot to explay what I mean
